A never-before-seen military manual detailing the day-to-day
operations of the U.S. military’s Guantánamo Bay detention facility
has been leaked to the web, affording a rare inside glimpse into the
institution where the United States has imprisoned hundreds of
suspected terrorists since 2002.

The 238-page document, “Camp Delta Standard Operating Procedures,” is
dated March 28, 2003. It is unclassified, but designated “For Official
Use Only.” It hit the web last Wednesday on Wikileaks.org.

The disclosure highlights the internet’s usefulness to whistle-blowers
in anonymously propagating documents the government and others would
rather conceal. The Pentagon has been resisting — since October 2003
— a Freedom of Information Act request from the American Civil
Liberties Union seeking the very same document.

Anonymous open-government activists created Wikileaks in January,
hoping to turn it into a clearinghouse for such disclosures. The site
uses a Wikipedia-like system to enlist the public in authenticating
and analyzing the documents it publishes.

The Camp Delta document includes schematics of the camp, detailed
checklists of what “comfort items” such as extra toilet paper can be
given to detainees as rewards, six pages of instructions on how to
process new detainees, instructions on how to psychologically
manipulate prisoners, and rules for dealing with hunger strikes.

“What strikes me is the level of detail for handling all kind of
situations, from admission to barbers and burials,” says Jamil Dakwar,
advocacy director of the ACLU’s Human Rights program. Dakwar was in
Guantánamo last week for a military-commission hearing.

The Pentagon did not reply to a request for comment on the document.

Dakwar sees hints of Abu Ghraib in a section instructing guards to use
dogs to intimidate prisoners. He also raises concerns over a section
on the International Committee of the Red Cross, or ICRC, which
indicates that some prisoners were hidden from Red Cross
representatives.

The manual shows how the military coded each prisoner according to the
level of access the Red Cross would have. The four levels are:

“That actually raises a lot of concerns about the administration’s
genuineness in terms of allowing ICRC full access, as was promised to
the world,” Dakwar says. “They are the only organization that has
access to the detainees, and this raises a lot of questions.”

The ICRC does not make public reports about the conditions in prisons
and gulags around the world, but instead meets privately with
governments to persuade them to change their policies.

The manual also includes instructions on how to use military dogs to
intimidate prisoners.

“MWD (Military Working Dogs) will walk ‘Main Street’ in Camp Delta
during shifts to demonstrate physical presence to detainees,” reads a
directive in the “Psychological Deterrence” section. “MWD will not be
walked through the blocks unless directed by the (Joint Detention
Operations Group).”

The document was signed by Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller. According to
media reports, Miller introduced harsh interrogation methods to
Guantánamo, such as shackling detainees into stress positions and
using guard dogs to exploit what the former head commander in Iraq Lt.
Gen. Ricardo Sanchez referred to as “Arab fear of dogs.”

Miller visited Iraq in 2003 to share the Guantánamo methods. Soon
after that visit, the infamous Abu Ghraib photos were taken.

President Bush said in 2006 he wanted to close the Guantánamo Bay
prison camp. The military is prosecuting some detainees under military-
commission rules set by Congress, and trying to repatriate hundreds of
others.

A new internet initiative called Wikileaks seeks to promote good
government and democratization by enabling anonymous disclosure and
publication of confidential government records.

“WikiLeaks is developing an uncensorable version of WikiPedia for
untraceable mass document leaking and analysis,” according to the
project web site.

“Our primary targets are highly oppressive regimes in China, Russia,
central eurasia, the middle east and sub-saharan Africa, but we also
expect to be of assistance to those in the west who wish to reveal
unethical behavior in their own governments and corporations.”

“A system [that] enables everyone to leak safely to a ready audience
is the most cost effective means of promoting good government — in
health and medicine, in food supply, in human rights, in arms control
and democratic institutions.”

Wikileaks says that it has already acquired over one million documents
that it is now preparing for publication.

The project web site is not yet fully “live.” But an initial offering
— a document purportedly authored by Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys of
Somalia’s radical Islamic Courts Union — is posted in a zipped file
here.

An analysis of the document’s authenticity and implications is posted
here.

Wikileaks invited Secrecy News to serve on its advisory board. We
explained that we do not favor automated or indiscriminate publication
of confidential records.

In the absence of accountable editorial oversight, publication can
more easily become an act of aggression or an incitement to violence,
not to mention an invasion of privacy or an offense against good
taste.

So we disagree on first principles? No problem, replied Wikileaks:
“Advisory positions are just that — advisory! If you want to advise
us to censor, then by all means do so.”

While Wikileaks seeks to make unauthorized disclosures technologically
immune to government control, an opposing school of thought proposes
to expand U.S. government authority to seize control of information
that is already in the public domain when its continued availability
is deemed unacceptably dangerous.

“Although existing authorities do not directly address the subject, it
appears that reasonable restrictions upon the possession and
dissemination of catastrophically dangerous information can be
constitutionally implemented,” suggests Stewart Harris of the
Appalachian School of Law. See “Restrictions are justifiable,”
National Law Journal, December 11, 2006.http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1165501509178